by Victor Serge
. . . Living is never done with
and every day we’re the same,
vain, vain, vain, pain . . .
His heart was beating regularly.
* * *
In the dark corner beneath the window, the dampness softened the paint on the wall. It was there that Mikhail Ivanovich made a scratch every morning with his nail; every seven days he drew a longer line—it was his calendar. “Four months already!” Although it seemed senseless, the passage of time somehow eased this whole nasty business. No one bothered with him any more, and he merely sent a few words of useless protest to the prosecutor in charge of control or to other high officials once a week. Jokers! Frauds! Pious rogues, beyond a doubt. The cell’s restfulness did its work, he felt a little better after all the strain—yet tormented by worry at night because of that pain in the area of his heart which came back every three or four days. He asked for the doctor. Around eleven o’clock the next morning, the Chief Guard entered quietly, carefully examined the window-bars, the bare table, the waxed floor. Then, satisfied: “You asked for the doctor?” There then appeared a personage in a white smock and, in a totally neutral voice, with a glance so neutral it seemed to see nothing: “What is your problem?” The first time, Mikhail Ivanovich carefully explained that it was his heart. The personage in the white smock was carrying a box suspended across his chest. He opened it, removed three pills from a compartment with a tweezers, and said: “One every morning.” When the door was closed again, Mikhail Ivanovich broke into wild guffaws. That pill, all ready to calm, revive, invigorate, perhaps cure an unknown heart, that mechanical perfection—the man, the white smock, the little box, the tweezers, the pill—attained an absolute imbecility. The spy-hole opened, a voice hissed: “Citizen, laughter is forbidden.” Mikhail Ivanovich let out another guffaw, even louder. The door opened, a strapping peasant in uniform took two steps into the cell and said severely: “Please, Citizen, stop laughing. It’s forbidden.”
Mikhail Ivanovich felt he was going joyfully mad. The three pills on the table took on a fire-green hue, they were about to leap into the air, all by themselves, swell up into balloon-heads, and burst into wild laughter. He was ready to holler, to stamp with rage, for his laughter was swelling into fury and tears were clouding his eyes.
“Please be quiet, Citizen,” said the guard even more quietly. “I’m the one who’ll get punished for you.”
“They’ve really got us—tied to one another,” thought Mikhail Ivanovich as the laughter died out within him. Another night his pain got worse. It must have been at the beginning of the fifth month. He had been reading for two weeks. They brought him stacks of old yellowed books. When the white-smocked personage reappeared, he curtly turned his back. “Heart again?” he said. Mikhail Ivanovich gave no answer. The tweezers placed three little pills on the edge of the table, the neutral voice murmured: “One in the evening. Anyway, it will calm you . . .”
That day Mikhail Ivanovich’s cell was changed, inexplicably. He lost the pentagon-shaped patch of sky formed by the outer bars in the upper corner of the window. His new cell, one floor lower, was less bright; and all he could see of the world was a patch of grey stonework. He lost his calendar, the addition of weeks and months, and decided to live outside time. He lost the end of a Wells novel about the future. Between the lines of the text, lettered in minuscule, pale pencil-marks to escape the vigilant eyes of the librarians, a maniac had written several times over: “Pray for the executioners, pray for the victims, pray for me.” An intense sadness swept down over Mikhail Ivanovich. He forbade himself to think about Ganna, about Tamarochka. He forbade himself to think about himself, about the future. He forbade himself to try to understand any more. He clenched his jaws, frowned, and paced back and forth until bedtime, reviewing in his mind Rosa Luxemburg’s theory of the accumulation of capital along with Dvoyalatzki’s objections, Bukharin’s and his own.
Having smoked all his cigarettes and devoured his hunk of black bread as he paced, he went to bed at the signal. According to Bukharin, “under an hypothetical State Capitalism, where the capitalist class would be consolidated into a single trust, and in which the economy would be organized, although class antagonisms would remain, there would be no crises, despite the underconsumption of the masses, since reciprocal demand among all sectors of production as well as consumer demand would be established in advance.” Bukharin will go far with his formulas for a capitalism so perfectly organized that it ends up resembling socialism in all its features—except for justice. “What am I saying here? How did that entity, justice, unknown in economics, get into this?” The approach of sleep impaired his thinking. Mikhail Ivanovich observed himself on the brink of succumbing to the oldest form of idealism. At that instant, pain came to life under his left breast. And what do you have to say about death, old brother? Is it metaphysical twaddle, an entity, or what? Nothing to do with economics either, death. The pain made him gasp and bite the pillow. It extinguished the last worldly light within him—that hard profusion of electricity falling from the ceiling—carried him off into a dark rocking beyond, beyond . . . Somewhere within his brain or his soul, the imprisoned ideas continued their useless course. “And yet the revolution . . .” He gasped.
* * *
Did they have to wait until he was sick before springing that surprise on him! Nervous wrinkles were etching themselves around his nose, he felt like acting rude. Yes, like calling this comrade chief a camel, explaining to him that he positively looked like a camel. But the camel is a useful, patient beast. It crosses deserts; it has a precious function in trade; it carried ancient civilizations on its humps. Whereas you, citizen! I don’t know what slimy responsibilities you carry on your back nor where your caravan is leading us. In any case, you are one of those people who cost the revolution dear. Mikhail Ivanovich, naked, was thinking these thoughts while a doctor listened to his chest. “Turn around. Good. Lie down. No malaria?” The room was naked too. Seated, with his legs comfortably crossed, an officer of about fifty was observing the naked man—his nervous wrinkles, his beard, thick and heavy under his chin, broad around the cheeks, the simian beard of a stubborn prisoner. This officer had two little red rectangles on his collar: thus the rank of a major or a department head, probably a confidential aide of Comrade Molchanov, candidate member of the Central Committee, member of the Collegium of the United State Political Administration (OGPU), member of the Special Board, director of the Secret Service in charge of oppositionists.
“Get dressed,” said the doctor.
The doctor was filling in a questionnaire. He wrote something on a pink card which he handed to the Major-Department Head to read. The latter asked a question in a low voice, then, having heard the answer, murmured,
“Ah! Very good!”
Mikhail Ivanovich heard him. All his life this officer probably had no more to say than Ah! Very Good! Stupid and self-satisfied. When, on his night-table, under the silk lampshade, he finds this note from his wife: “I love another man and you’re nothing but a clod”—he’ll say mechanically Ah! Very Good! When they chuck his own arse into prison for administrative abuse (15,000 roubles of unjustifiable travel expenses), he will look right into the eyes of his chief, his double in every respect, and he’ll certainly say, Ah! Very good, Comrade Chief.
“Come,” said the Major.
The two men were in a soberly-furnished private office. French books behind the glass front of a bookcase.
“You read French novels?” asked Mikhail Ivanovich in an aggressive voice.
“No time.”
Nothing on the table but a telephone and some push-buttons. The Major was looking calmly at Mikhail Ivanovich. He pushed forward a pack of amazing five-rouble cigarettes. Waited until Mikhail Ivanovich got comfortable in his armchair, lighted up. Waited another moment for Mikhail Ivanovich to get nervous. Sighed and, as if in an aside, said Hmm, Hmm in a vexed tone of voice.
“My nerves are steady,” Mikhail Ivanovich said to him
self. “Keep up your little game.” In reality he was beginning to feel scared. The pink card had appeared on the table and the Major was reading it over. Brusquely:
“Your wife and your child are well.”
“Ah! Very good.”
“Now I’m the one saying Ah! Very good,” Mikhail Ivanovich thought bitterly. Might we be interchangable? That would be curious. A double-edged idea.
“You are . . . rather seriously ill.”
“Ah! Very good.”
“And I really don’t know what you’re doing in prison.”
“Wonderful to hear you say so,” exhaled Mikhail Ivanovich through a fat smoke-ring.
The Major shrugged. His meaningless voice, like a streamlet of grey water, intoned words, words.
“There’s really no point in the two of us behaving like diplomats. First of all, we know everything. Much more than you think, anyway. You’re not quite an enemy. You’re not quite with us. Don’t get angry, I know your dossier by heart. You quit the Opposition in June 1928, in agreement with Ivan Nikitich Smirnov. But on the questionnaire of the Central Control Commission you left the section concerning your relations with other oppositionists blank. Despite this lack of confidence in the Party, which in reality made you unworthy of the Party’s confidence, you were reinstated. Four months later you wrote, in a letter addressed to a counter-revolutionary who has been cast out of the Party and has paid for his crimes . . .”
If a bell had started clanging at full peal in his chest, Mikhail Ivanovich would not have heard it with more deafening clarity than he heard the heavy beating of his heart. Temples constricted, throat tight, breathing short. Sacha arrested. That’s why he no longer answered his mail. But why, for God’s sake, why?
“You wrote: ‘Collectivization, in its present form with all its violence and disorder, will end up by turning the entire peasantry against the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ You made veiled allusions to the disorders in Uzbekistan. Note that I could ask you how you came by your information about them and remind you of the penalties for domestic espionage. We have that letter. We had a copy of it at the time, and now we are in possession of the original. You added, ‘I’m afraid that I. N. was in error. He is blinded by his loyalty and, in that matter of the missing editions, Trubkin-Pipeface is duping him as he is duping all of us . . .’ Do you recall that? Is it possible that I remember your style better than you yourself? These things sometimes happen. Trubkin-Pipeface! Aren’t you blushing? Do you think we didn’t understand? You, an old underground worker, using such a childish cover-name for the recognized leader of the Party. Will you deny it? Don’t make a sign. Better think it over first.
“You were something of a wit. If I charged you with counter-revolutionary talk, perhaps you would protest? But when you were telling funny stories to aspiring actresses, did you think you were still a faithful member of the Party? ‘Do you know the difference between a great misfortune and a national disaster, Zina Valentinovna? Imagine a very great leader falling to the sidewalk from the eighth floor balcony of the Central Committee. That would be a great misfortune. Now imagine him surviving. That would be a national disaster.’ I can’t imitate the way you told it, Mikhail Ivanovich. The joke loses its flavour, doesn’t it? You sent her far, to a very cold climate, that little goose of a Zina Valentinovna, with your witty remarks which she went around repeating everywhere. Will you deny that in precise language this is what is known as discrediting the leaders of the party?”
Mikhail Ivanovich felt himself blush, then turn pale. Then his forehead grew damp.
“I’d rather not go into your conversations with Kostychev, who passed you Numbers 10 and 14 of the Bulletin of the Opposition. I could quote your own words to you, describe the scornful way you pronounced certain names in private . . .”
Kostychev, Kostychev too! A double agent, a coward, or . . . Yet it’s totally impossible. Anyway, they wouldn’t use his name if he were. Then who? Maybe his wife? That drab blonde who was sleeping behind the screen—who was pretending to sleep, who was probably listening—while we whispered, face to face. There we were, our elbows on newspaper, the empty liquor glasses in front of us, both of us deathly sad, alone, hardly daring to confess our enormous apprehension?
“You teach. If one analysed your course on the French Revolution, page by page, it would reveal such insidious counter-revolutionary propaganda that you would never—no, never—leave the concentration camps. Who were you aiming at in your lessons on Barras, Tallien, Bourdon? And your distinguo between Right and Left Thermidorians, the authentic ones and the in-spite-of-themselves. Ha! Ha! Do you imagine that we were fast asleep and that all of the youth who listened to you were betraying the Party like yourself? Not a single line about Babeuf that isn’t a criminal allusion.”
Motionless, head erect, with a sort of grimace stamped on his face, Mikhail Ivanovich felt prostrate with indignation and disgust. Corrupt idiots! You see allusions in every line because the Babeufs of today are in your prisons. You’re a living allusion to every kind of counter-revolution. But impossible, useless, to say a word. Any word would be turned against itself, would mean, after rolling in that muddy stream, the opposite of the truth. And fear was there too. The drab voice continued:
“You finally decided to abandon your apparent submission to the Party, you formed with Kostychev and Ilin a Committee of Three . . .”
“That’s untrue,” cried Mikhail Ivanovich. “Untrue! Untrue, untrue!”
“It’s true,” continued the drab voice. “You’re wrong to get angry. They confessed. I have their signed statements right here. They implicate you overwhelmingly. You have raised a criminal hand against the Party. I no longer know what might save you except for a sincere repentance whose sincerity will have to be demonstrated.”
So that’s what they’re getting at. They know very well that what they say is false. What do they want? The cigarette between Mikhail Ivanovich’s stiff fingers—which were somehow foreign to his being—had gone out with a long cylinder of ash hanging on it. That ash fell softly. Thus a worn-down will collapses. All of this leads nowhere. All of this is absurd. Resist? Useless. They can do anything. Give in again, play their game, humiliate yourself, lie, where does that lead to? He remembered the auscultation with dull anger. . . .
“Comrade Judge,” he said harshly, “all these aberrations have tired me out. Send me back to my cell, I need sleep. Anyway, I won’t answer you any more.”
Ponderously, he got to his feet, supporting himself on the edge of the table with both hands, unaware that he was reeling. Ah! Very good, he said with a kind of wild joy, as if he had just recognized the man seated opposite him, whose hand was softly caressing the holster of his revolver.
“Listen, esteemed Comrade Investigating Judge, to some lines of poetry I’m fond of:
In his heart there remained
one hundred twenty beats
one hundred twenty beats . . .
but the most extraordinary thing was that the man didn’t give a good goddam . . .
“Do you want,” said the inquisitor, “to request a visit from your wife?”
“No.”
* * *
The most sensible thing would be to die, and that’s probably what will happen to me (“. . . one hundred twenty beats . . .”) Farewell Ganna, Tamarochka. Ganna will remarry. That fat Bykov once wooed her; who knows if they’re not sleeping together already. How else could she live with her salary as a statistician? Bykov has oily skin and a pig-like expression; Ganna’s flesh is smooth and cool; her soul is like her flesh, only more defenceless. Let him penetrate that flesh and intrude on that soul. Farewell Ganna, the child must live.
Such nagging, base thoughts plunged the man on the cot into a state of unpleasant queasiness.
I’m not jealous, yet I feel nauseous as if I were seasick.
We were beaten in 1923, thanks to our faith. We still had confidence: it was already too late. Only a few thousand of us were left who wanted to co
ntinue the Revolution, which everyone had had enough of. The world was subsiding into inertia and nothing was finished. We were theorizing, searching for correct formulations, for explosive truths while the others—and there were a hundred of them for every one of us—only wanted to spend the summers at watering-places, bring home silk stockings for their wives, sleep with well-fleshed creatures. And you, too, Brother. You spent your Sundays playing cards and drinking the sweet wines of Crimea. Then you walked Masha home along the banks of the Moika—a laughing Masha with shining white teeth in a moon face. You didn’t love her, you knew you would never love her and you didn’t talk about love. She consulted you absent-mindedly about Party history, but she knew very well that once you reached the shade of the Summer Garden, you would grasp her elbows with determined hands and cover her face with moist kisses without speaking a word. She was waiting for that moment with all her being. Remember the sight of her head thrown back willingly, cool, closed lips, eyes shut. And then you would move on in silence and then, in the light of a first lamp, you would continue in a polite voice: After the Second Congress, Masha, the unity tendency . . .
You knew very well that you were breaking her heart. Now this pale memory is breaking your heart. For your life is over. You’re still attached to it since your flesh still remembers these feelings. Of no importance. You think you’re unique and that the universe would be empty without you. In reality you occupy in the world the place of an ant in the grass. The ant moves along carrying a louse-egg—a momentous task for which it was born. You crush it without knowing, without being aware of it. Without the ant itself being aware of it. Nothing changes. There will be ants until the end of the world who will bravely carry louse-eggs through the tunnels of the city. Don’t suffer on account of your nullity. Let it reassure you. You lose so little when you lose yourself—and the world loses nothing. You can see very well, from up in an aeroplane, that cities are anthills . . .